The Beginner's Guide Quotes

The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.

Will Thisbee gave me The Beginner's Cook-Book for Girl Guides. It was just the thing; the writer assumes you know nothing about cookery and writes useful hints - "When adding eggs, break the shells first.

It was being a runner that mattered, not how fast or how far I could run. The joy was in the act of running and in the journey, not in the destination. We have a better chance of seeing where we are when we stop trying to get somewhere else. We can enjoy every moment of movement, as long as where we are is as good as where we'd like to be. That's not to say that you need to be satisfied forever with where you are today. But you need to honor what you've accomplished, rather than thinking of what's left to be done (p. 159).

Every beginner possesses a great potential to be an expert in his or her chosen field.

We are not trapped by our thoughts. What we generally do, however, is create thoughts that trap us.” (p.162)

Isn’t it remarkable that almost every child follows the same religion as their parents, and it always just happens to be the right religion!

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work.

Make no apologies for surviving.

When you follow a star you know you will never reach that star; rather it will guide you to where you want to go. ... So it is with the world. It will only ever lead you back to yourself.

It isn’t a matter of getting the body you want, it’s a matter of doing the most you can with the body you have.

To look at people in capitalist society and conclude that human nature is egoism, is like looking at people in a factory where pollution is destroying their lungs and saying that it is human nature to cough

It is, therefore, a great source of virtue for the practiced mind to learn, bit by bit, first to change about in visible and transitory things, so that afterwards it may be possible to leave them behind altogether. The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong man has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his. From boyhood I have dwelt on foreign soil and I know with what grief sometimes the mind takes leave of the narrow hearth of a peasant's hut, and I know too how frankly it afterwards disdains marble firesides and panelled halls.

Find something you enjoy doing and give it everything you've got, and the money will take care of itself.

How can you tell when someone loves the real you and not the idea of you?” “They see you at your lowest,” he said softly, pitching his voice so Cruz had no hope of overhearing, “and they don’t blink. They don’t offer you a hand up, they offer you a hand to hold while you rise on your own.

Run naked through your fears.

Meditation is silence, energising and fulfilling. Silent is the eloquent expression of the inexpressible.

Establishing dominance early in the relationship is key. Vampire children are like human children in that they can sense weakness. They will wait for you to be busy or too distracted to realize that you’ve given them permission to feed on the pizza guy. —Siring for the Stupid: A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Newborn Vampires

The thing about love is, when you’re raised with an excess, the overflow splashes onto those around you.

We talk of independence. No man is independent. We are all interdependent; and we shall only rise as we carry others with us, and as we are assisted by others.

Focus on where you are instead of where you wish you were. The joy will follow.

A person who owns property and has a stake in the enterprise is likely to work harder and feel happier and do a better job than a person who doesn

Love isn’t a straight path,” he advised. “You don’t know how twisted it will get until you try walking it.

All good friendships changed the people within them to a better version of themselves.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

But failure to disprove something is not a good reason to believe it.

Just remember that money cannot buy you happiness (although it might make misery more tolerable).

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system

There is no such thing as a leap into literacy.

We all deserve someone who takes care of us, even when we don’t need it.

All good partnerships ought to require both people to take turns being the damsel, like a team-building exercise.

you learned appreciation when people proved your worth by spending time with you instead of money on you.

Wounded animals heal best in their dens. You owe no one an apology for doing whatever it takes to survive.

Many who work magic with crystals and stones will tell say that the stones choose you, rather than the other way around.

One should plan for spiritual enlightenment. At least bring a flashlight.

I love you," she said, stomach growling. "You love bacon." "I have a big heart," she protested. "There's room enough for both of you in it.

Their love wasn’t simple. Practice gave it an effortless appearance, but that was far from the truth. It was a kind word in the morning, a thoughtful meal prepared without request, a kiss before parting ways, a kiss when coming back together. A million tiny kindnesses sprinkled throughout the days, the months, the years.

When people say they are atheists they don’t mean they can’t prove that there are no gods. Strictly speaking, it’s impossible to prove that something does not exist. We don’t positively know there are no gods, just as we can’t prove that there are no fairies or pixies or elves or hobgoblins or leprechauns or pink unicorns; just as we can’t prove that Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy don’t exist. There’s a billion things you can imagine and nobody can disprove.

Successful Investing takes time, discipline and patience. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

Your progress as a runner is a frustratingly slow process of small gains. It’s a matter of inching up your mileage and your pace. It’s a matter of learning to celebrate the small gains as if they were Olympic victories. It means paying your dues on the road or the treadmill. It means searching for the limits of your body and demanding that your spirit not give up. It means making the most of what you have. It means making yourself an athlete one workout at a time.

If you are working with authors, you are accepting a great responsibility and must tread very carefully. The author's work is a part of herself, a creative endeavor she has poured her heart and soul into. Protecting and nurturing that work and the author is part of the job of a publisher.

A useful analogy is to see traditional societies as relying on instantaneous (or minimally delayed) and constantly replenished solar income, while modern civilization is withdrawing accumulated solar capital at rates that will exhaust it in a tiny fraction of the time that was needed to create it.

Unfortunately, motor vehicles are also responsible for 1.25 million accidental deaths every year (and more than ten times as many serious injuries),

The only magic in our lives as runners is the magic of consistency. Not every run will make you feel great.

Trying harder doesn’t always equal more success; it leads to more frustration, less satisfaction, and giving up.

Depression was an old coat I sometimes wore. It fit too tight in the shoulders and pinched as I moved, but taking it off required herculean effort,

The mind is just like a muscle - the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets and the more it can expand.” -Idowu Koyenikan

Being a good person is hard. Doing the right thing is hard. That’s why only masochists keep a clean nose.

Don’t bother getting out of bed. The world is crowded enough without you and your big ideas.

Don't compliment me in the middle of an argument. It won't make me stammer or blush, and it just makes you look desperate.

Scientific truths are true even if there’s nobody around to know about them; were true before humans appeared; will be true after we are extinct.

Traditional woods used for sacred brooms include birch, ash, and willow.

Content shared in the right communities can reach ‘king’ status if you know where to post it…

People growing up in different countries copy their parents and believe in the god or gods of their own country. These beliefs contradict each other, so they can’t all be right.

We can’t prove there are no fairies but that doesn’t mean we think there’s a 50:50 chance fairies exist.

What is a simple small change that I can do to make my life better

As the prayer goes, ‘grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

All I want to do is ask the universe: "Make me not ill, pal. I just wanna be able to wash my hair like everyone else.

You long to go ito nature because nature doesn't care about you. To be clear, it's not that nature sees you, accepts you for who you are, and loves you anyway: nature just doesn't give a shit about you.

Whenever you feel overwhelmed, distracted and out of sorts. Turn your attention to your breath, inhale, exhale, and listen to the sound and movement of your everyday breath flowing softly in and out through your nose. You will reclaim your calm and refocus on what matters.

The problem is that you THINK that you have to be motivated to do something, instead of just doing it and then having it done. Tip: The willingness to do things comes with action. Don’t wait until you feel like going to the gym and exercising. Start exercising right away and there’s a huge possibility that you’ll feel the desire to continue.

Maybe that apparent ease was what made their unions burn so bright from the outside looking in. Maybe that kind of love wasn’t simple. Maybe it was a goal you strove toward every single day for the rest of your lives. A peak you never reached, but that was okay as long as you kept climbing.

We cannot learn if we are stuck in our mind’s conditioned way of thinking. We must be open to discovering the Truth, whatever it may turn out to be. This requires a state of openness, curiosity, and sincerity, a state of pure awareness, a state of observing reality without jumping to conclusions about what reality is. This state of direct experience is known in Zen as “beginner’s mind,” and it is essential to embody this state when we want to understand our experience.

Pink, the color of rose quartz, is a color with a harmonizing, loving vibration. The color and the physical makeup of this kind of quartz combine to make it a powerful force for drawing love into your life. Likewise, the color green has a vibrational resonance with abundance. Therefore, some green stones, such as bloodstone, are particularly good for spellwork involving matters of prosperity.

The mother of Jesus, I sometimes remember, was visited by an angel and is seen as a saint; the mother of the Buddha died at his birth. Is it any surprise that Buddhism is about learning to live with loss, while Christianity is about salvation from above?

Suddenly, when the run itself is the goal, there are no more bad runs. Suddenly it doesn’t matter if we don’t finish within our goal time—or don’t finish at all. What matters is that we tried, that we enjoyed the process. What matters is that we got out there.

prior to our encounter i was a peace lily planted in the desert under attack by the sun

Time Is Non-Existent, This Universe Is Cold.

you gave me your hands, told me your past, and quickly became something that i couldn’t ignore.

i'll realize that your voice holds a melancholy tune then we'll stare together, at the arch of the moon,

each carved tree knows that every story has two sides.

sometimes my heart doesn't fit in my mouth instead, meaningless words tumble out i wish the right phrases could roll off my tongue so how much you mean to me could become

how does it feel to miss your other half you ask. well, longing for your love kinda feels like being yanked from your bathtub after you pour a delicate glass of white wine

the blood in my body drives me insane

keep

I have in my possession a piece of paper that says you're mine

Watts said that real freedom was not freedom of choice but freedom from choice.

Awareness is the ultimate sacred wonder.

Energy will do anything that can be done in the world. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)

Real is an abstract concept. Are we ever ourselves, our whole selves, except when we’re alone?

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”  – The Buddha

I’m committed to never listening to anybody when it comes to my own path and happiness.

As the Supreme Buddha once said, “The root of suffering is attachment.

Since it is in the nature of consciousness to be reflective, we can never fully inhabit any conscious state that we are in, so that our ‘restlessness’ lies in the very nature of our being.

Pantheists are a little vague about what they believe. They say things like ‘My god is everything’ or ‘My god is nature’ or ‘My god is the universe’. Or ‘My god is the deep mystery of everything we don’t understand’. The great Albert Einstein used the word ‘God’ in pretty much this last sense. That’s very different from a god who listens to your prayers, reads your innermost thoughts and forgives (or punishes) your sins—all of which the Abrahamic God is supposed to do. Einstein was adamant that he didn’t believe in a personal god who does any of those things.

There is nothing wrong with having grand visions, but the most important favor you can do for yourself is to learn how to break those visions into small parts and attack each piece slowly, one at a time.

A MANTRA FOR HOME HEALTH CARE I am my own healer. I have a radiant voice within that guides me. I can make decisions for myself. I can rely on others as needed, but at my discretion. It is my body, my health, my balance, and my responsibility to make right choices for myself. Right choices include working with competent health-care professionals when necessary, allowing friends and family to help as needed, and, above all, being true to my beliefs, with the wisdom and willingness to change as part of the path of healing.

Your mind is yours—and yours alone. If you focus on healthy thoughts and develop balanced opinions about your situation, you will cultivate positive emotions and find lasting enthusiasm to live your best life. You will see negativity for what it is: a waste of energy. You will learn to stop allowing fear, anger, and other anxieties to grow. You will discover not only that you can weather challenges, but you often find them enjoyable.

However well you do in the competition for the greatest toys, longest life, and healthiest brain, the best medical research indicates that eventually you’re going to be dead. And you’re going to stay dead for many years longer than you were alive, and all that will be left of you is people’s memories of you, which is to say, your reputation.

Despite these advances, internal combustion engines remain rather inefficient prime movers and the overall process of converting the chemical energy of gasoline to the kinetic energy of a moving passenger car is extraordinarily wasteful.

These three tools of light, energy, and mass by which the Divine geometer constructs the cosmos and by which the symbolic geometer approximates archetypal patterns are also mirrored in us. What scientists call “light, energy, and mass” are the traditional “spirit, soul, and body” described by Plutarch as nous (divine intellect), psyche (soul), and soma (body).

physics come from, so God must have made them up.’ Wherever there is a gap in our understanding, people try to plug the gap with God. But the trouble with gaps is that science has the annoying habit of coming along and filling them. Darwin filled the biggest gap of all. And we should have the courage to expect that science will eventually fill the gaps that remain. That is the theme of this final chapter.

One of my pet peeves is the habit of labelling young children with the religion of their parents: ‘Catholic child’, ‘Protestant child’, ‘Muslim child’. Such phrases can be heard used of children too young to talk, let alone hold religious opinions. It seems to me as absurd as talking about a ‘Socialist child’ or ‘Conservative child’, and nobody would ever use a phrase like that. I don’t think we should talk about ‘atheist children’ either.

In contrast to advice, our UN-VICE is not a suggestion of behavior or a mandate. Instead, our UN-VICE is a way to decipher changing circumstances imaginatively. All advice should be carefully considered, combined with an emphasis on developing and trusting our own capabilities. In our increasingly UN-VICE world, the value of recommendations is rapidly decreasing. Systemic disruption has devalued ad-vice; instead, we offer our best UN-VICE. Inspired by Richard Feynman, we must explore unanswered questions, rather than adhering to unquestionable answers. Zen Master Suzuki Roshi said “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” Our UN-VICE draws from the three stages of the Japanese martial arts concept shuhari. In the first stage, shu, the student masters the established fundamentals. In the second stage, ha, the learner practices and experiments with novel approaches, guided by their own unique perspectives. In the third stage, ri, they break loose from confining rulebooks to adapt freely to any situation. Shuhari is a journey, a continuous process of learning, experimenting, and letting go.

Try not to grieve. For a few years yet I will exist in memory, but don’t let these thoughts be sad ones. Think of your own life like a book. For some people I am a chapter; for others I am a paragraph or a footnote. But please think of the Simon section of your history with happiness, and move on. Your book is your own. And for goodness’ sake don’t let the thinking about an essentially happy chapter mar the rest of it – that really doesn’t make sense. My life was pretty great – so smile about it!

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: “Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?” Despite

A famous aphorism tells us, „The Sufi is the child of the moment“ (as-sufi ibn al-waqt). One of its meanings is that the true Sufi lives in the constant awareness that his self is nothing but what he is at the present moment. And since each present moment is unique, each moment of the self is unique. In some Sufi texts, each moment is called a nafas, a „breath.“ The Sufis are then called „the folk of the breaths“ (ahl al-anfas), because they live in full awareness of the uniqueness of the nafs at each nafas, each breath, each instant. (p. 55-56)

Ethereum is the second-biggest cryptocurrency in the world after Bitcoin. It’s also very different from Bitcoin in its structure and purpose. Ethereum wasn’t developed as a currency alone. Its innovation lies in opening the blockchain up to development for different applications outside currencies and finance. Developers can build software on top of Ethereum’s blockchain, and use the network’s distributed ledger to build trust for all kinds of applications. Since the Ethereum blockchain is decentralized, once a developer has built an application, it can’t be censored or taken down by any authority. That application lives as long as the Ethereum blockchain continues.

Lizards frolicked in the flames of a bonfire; two lonely fish swam toward each other under the sea; a lion devoured the sun. An eagle flying high in the air was incongruously chained to a toad crawling on the ground. A wolf and dog battled in the middle of a deserted town. A slithering serpent entwined itself around a female corpse lying in an open grave. Another serpent lay nailed to a cross, while other serpents and dragons chased their own tails in never ending circles.

Reading is like skiing. When done well, when done by an expert, both reading and skiing are graceful, harmonious, activities. When done by a beginner, both are awkward, frustrating, and slow. Learning to ski is one of the most humiliating experiences an adult can undergo (that is one reason to start young). After all, an adult has been walking for a long time; he knows where his feet are; he knows how to put one foot in front of the other in order to get somewhere. But as soon as he puts skis on his feet, it is as though he had to learn to walk all over again. He slips and slides, falls down, has trouble getting up, gets his skis crossed, tumbles again, and generally looks- and feels- like a fool. Even the best instructor seems at first to be of no help. The ease with which the instructor performs actions that he says are simple but that the student secretly believes are impossible is almost insulting. How can you remember everything the instructors says you have to remember? Bend your knees. Look down the hill Keep your weight on the downhill ski. Keep your back straight, but nevertheless lean forward. The admonitions seem endless-how can you think about all that and still ski? The point about skiing, of course, is that you should not be thinking about the separate acts that, together, make a smooth turn or series of linked turns- instead, you should merely be looking ahead of you down the hill, anticipating bumps and other skiers, enjoying the feel of the cold wind on your cheeks, smiling with pleasure at the fluid grace of your body as you speed down the mountain. In other words, you must learn to forget the separate acts in order to perform all of them, and indeed any of them, well. But in order to forget them as separate acts, you have to learn them first as separate acts. only then can you put them together to become a good skier.

respiratory system encompasses the nose, throat, and lungs. Some of the oils that help the respiratory system include eucalyptus, myrrh, fennel, sandalwood, thyme, cypress, bergamot, and sage. · The digestive system is responsible for breaking down food and includes the stomach, liver, intestines, and gallbladder. Oils used for this include dandelion, marshmallow, meadow sweet, and chamomile. · The circulatory system is responsible for transporting blood and oxygen throughout the body. Oils used for this include lemon, lavender, peppermint, fennel, thyme, juniper, and white birch.  · The endocrine system includes the thyroid glands, the pancreas, and the hormone glands. Essential oils used are sweet marjoram, clary sage, fennel, jasmine, rose, lemon, and juniper. · The immune system is responsible for fighting against diseases including everything from a cold to malaria.   ·  The nervous system transmits nerve impulses throughout the body. These cells are vitally important to the function of the human body. Oils used for the nervous system include clove, basil, ylang ylang, lavender, chamomile, bergamot, and sweet marjoram. · The brain is responsible for the functions of almost every organ system throughout the body. The essential oils used for the brain include lavender, chamomile, basil, lemon, peppermint, and ginger.